Fire Chiefs’ Warning: Don’t rely on a fire engine near you

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firefighters tackling a blaze. pic courtesy: shoutmeloud.com

Don’t tell any potential rioter, arsonist or terrorist, but if the coalition continue with their present cuts policy by the time of the next general election the forces to fight such evils will be  seriously weakened.

This is  the sober conclusion of six of the most senior fire officers in the country who have already had experience in implementing some of the biggest cuts since Nick Clegg and David Cameron came into power. They cover such big cities as Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle, Bradford, Birmingham and Sheffield. Their phrase for what is about to happen – a further 27 per cent cut –  is ” potentially catastrophic.”

While the police have hogged the headlines the fire chiefs of a quarter of the most urban areas in England ( who strike me need a good public relations officer) have warned Eric Pickles, the communities secretary, that the service will not survive in its present form.

They exclude London where a botched privatisation has seen the capital’s fire service reliant on Lloyds TSB bank and machines serviced by a company snapped up by a baronet, Sir Aubrey Brocklebank, for £2.

The full story of the horrors facing the service can be read in my piece for exaro news ( http://www.exaronews.com) and also in the Independent  at http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/chief-fire-officers-warn-of-potentially-catastrophic-impact-of-cuts  and in Tribune magazine this week.

Suffice to say some very serious issues are being raised. Here a few of the quotes :

Steve McGuirk, chief fire officer of Greater Manchester, says: “A further 27 per cent disproportionate cut equates to a reduction of 11 whole-time crewed fire appliances, reducing frontline capacity by 24 per cent. All incidents requiring more than one fire appliance, which includes all domestic fires, commercial fires, secondary moorland/wild fires and other specialist incidents would have a slower effective response.”

Jamie Courtney, chief fire officer of South Yorkshire, says: “The extreme option of closing seven community fire stations would be necessary to absorb a further 27 per cent cut from the government grant. There would be an increase in deaths and injuries due to longer attendance times.”

His area incidentally include’s Nick Clegg’s Sheffield constituency.

West Yorkshire’s chief fire officer, Simon Pilling, said: “If the authority were to be faced with savings as great as 27 per cent, this could only be achieved through the ‘ad hoc’ and immediate closure of fire stations and the removal of appliances.”

Now this may sound alarmist but with a government committed to a 27 per cent cut over two years, this is not something that can be ignored and needs to be reversed.

Manchester was after all the scene of some of the worst riots just one year ago – and people are not going to thank the government if they is not enough manpower or machines to contain the  damage. Terrorism is also not unknown in Manchester either.

So far Eric Pickles has been pretty complacent. His spokesman saying :“Fire services can make sensible savings without impacting on the quality and breadth of services offered to communities. Such savings can include more flexible staffing arrangements, better sickness management, sharing back-office services, improved procurement and sharing chief fire officers and other senior staff.”

Yet if they read the submission officials would realise that all of this has already been done. For those wanting to see all the facts. the document is available from  Merseyside Fire here (http://bit.ly/Uy2Jzp) The chiefs are arguing about what they will have to cut next if the government  continues with its misguided cuts at this level.

Let’s hope that we don’t have endure another disaster before those in power  are convinced that some of these cuts are mad. Nobody wants to be left waiting to die in a burning building or in a motorway smash while under resourced services try to in vain to rescue them.

Sex and Violence: The different treatment of Tory councillors Holmes and Coleman

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Arrested and bailed; Brian Coleman

Last night Brian Coleman, the infamous former chair of the London fire authority and advocate of  mass privatisation, was arrested by police on suspicion of common assault after an incident outside a parade of shops in North Finchley.

He has been given police bail pending further inquiries into the alleged assault on  Buzz  cafe owner, Helen Michael, who fought a strong campaign against his privatised parking scheme during Coleman’s failed attempt to be re-elected as London Assembly member for Barnet and Camden. (See http://snipelondon.com/scoop/brian-coleman-arrested-on-suspicion-of-assault )

By sheer coincidence not many miles away  at St Albans magistrates court comments have been raised following another leading Tory pleading guilty to 23 charges of  creating and viewing child pornography, including  two extreme images. ( seehttp://bit.ly/Qr2osV) He will be sentenced on October 15.

Stephen Holmes, former Mayor of Dacorum and deputy chairman of Hertfordshire  children’s services, was also a leading advocate of Tory privatisation.

Let’s make it clear I am NOT linking the two men – I don’t know even if they know each other – nor suggesting that all privatisers are violent or paedophiles.

The link is to compare what the Conservatives have done about it. Dacorum Tories in Hemel Hempstead  immediately suspended Holmes following his arrest and he stood down as a borough and county councillor BEFORE even going to trial.

Stephen Holmes; Tories acted fast when police arrested him for keeping child pornography

Dacorum Tories are also looking  to appoint an independent ombudsman to look into complaints against councillors – particularly as people are asking what checks the party does when it selects candidates who are supposed to be trustworthy individuals.

Barnet Conservatives seem to indulge Coleman no matter what he says, what he does and who he insults. Given what happened last night it seems to me the Conservatives owe it to the electorate to suspend him from any remaining posts in Barnet and if found guilty they should demand his resignation.

If not Grant Shapps, the new chairman of the Tory Party  who knows all about Coleman, should insist the party takes action.

The Green Man of Wark

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Battlesteads Hotel: An ordinary country pub on the outside, but with a beating green heart inside

Just to show this website is not all doom and gloom  here is a heart warming story of a man who is showing how to  combat climate change.

Up a B road in a remoter part of Northumbria is the Saxon village of Wark. In this small community is the Battlesteads Hotel. As you can see above, on the outside it looks a very pretty ordinary country pub.

But this hotel is a pioneering green business and having just stayed there, I am more than impressed by the amazing efforts of the owners Richard and Dee Slade to create a comfortable environment that helps to save the planet.

Richard Slade preparing to pluck a rather large courgette for the pot!

This is not just the case of using low energy light bulbs and asking you to  reuse your towel – the normal lip service to ” green ” policies employed by Travelodge and other chains. Practically everything in this place you use is green or local.

The hotel is centrally heated and the hot water plentiful. But there is no gas or oil-fired boiler. The source is a large biomass boiler in an outbuilding fed by wood chip from  a sustainable forest less than mile away. A rainwater system  feeds organic vegetables , flowers and salads grown all the year round in polytunnels.

Breakfast and dinner also tick many of the low food miles boxes – with different cheeses coming Northumbria, Cumbria and Durham- beef from Northumbria  farms and low salt kippers smoked in the same county. And there are lots of real ales and some English wine.

And if you don’t finish your meal the residue from kitchen waste goes into a modern composter which produces the loam for the next generation of courgettes  and lettuces.

And there is more to come. He is planning to resurrect an old spring from a nearby farm helping drain the land. This will feed a new pond, to be the home for slug eating toads, frogs and Ken Livingstone note, newts.

And he has even  done his bit to thwart cuts ( despite bureaucratic opposition) from Northumbria Council by taking over the contract to supply Wark primary school with school dinners – after the authority withdrew the hot meals service to its schools. So a new generation of young Warkians are being sustainably fed – just like Saxon times. Jamie Oliver should approve, Michael Gove may not!

For the future this hotel is one of the few in the country – with an electric charging point for cars – beating Nissan’s planned production line for the vehicle by a year.

Up the road from Wark at Rothbury is the historic home of  Lord Armstrong, Cragside, home of Victorian arms manufacturer , innovator, who over a century ago as every Geordie should know- powered the first light bulb from hydro-electric power. The home is run by the National Trust (see http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/cragside/).

Lord Armstong’s Cragside estate – on a slightly grander scale.

Lord Armstrong and Richard Slade have one thing in common – both are pioneers. One is historic, one is very twenty second century. No doubt climate change sceptics like Lord Lawson would think this is a waste of time., though I bet his daughter, Nigella , would enjoy the food!

One day all hotels will all be like this, but in the meantime if you want a comfortable break with good food and beer and don’t want to help destroy the planet. Visit! The website is http://www.battlesteads.com/.

PS – for the cynics among you – we paid out own way to stay!

Revealed: The Old Etonian Baronet who snapped up London’s fire engines for £2

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Sir Aubrey Brocklebank- a hooray henry owning all London’s fire engines for £2? Pic courtesy Daily Telegraph

This is Sir Aubrey Thomas Brocklebank,  6th Baronet Brocklebank, of Greenlands and Irton Hall, Cumberland.

He is now the proud owner – not just of a  battered 2cv  racing car as pictured  here – but of the entire fleet of fire engines owned by the London fire brigade. When you next have a fire in Greater London this is the man who will responsible that the crew arrive in a properly maintained and equipped fire engine.

In the mad world of  privatisation  Sir Aubrey was able to snap the fleet and  get his hands on an income stream worth nearly £200m over the next ten years – for JUST £2.

You the  council taxpayers will be paying this man £1.5m a month to look after London’s fleet. He got this  at a knock down price because  the Greater London Authority foolishly under Ken Livingstone and even more foolishly under Boris Johnson and former London fire chairman, Brian Coleman, sold off  London’s fire engines and a 20 year lease on its own maintenance headquarters in Ruislip to a private firm.

The firm was sold on to AssetCo ( which I have written about extensively) whose  own chief executive, John Shannon, had to be dismissed, when he left it teetering on bankruptcy. The actual engines are at present owned by bankers, Lloyds TSB, one of the chief creditors of AssetCo London which had over £30m in debts and haven’t a penny to  replace the ailing fleet of engines from 2014. This has been admitted by Sue Budden, director of finance,of the London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority, . She told councillors at a meeting last week: “When they look ahead and look at the big vehicle replacement that is due to start in 2014, I think they can see they are not set up to cover that.” The full story by me is on the Exaro  news website at http://www.exaronews.com.

Step in Sir Aubrey who bought ailing  AssetCo for  £2 – without the fire authority or its staff- even knowing until the deal was signed. Such is the new world of privatised services – elected people aren’t even important enough  to know who owns them.

Now Sir Aubrey appears to be the scion of a very famous and powerful shipping family who owned two stately homes. One, Nunsmere Hall in Cheshire was built for his namesake, the third baronet, who went on to join the board of Cunard, and drew up plans for the original Queen Mary in the 1920s. The family have a steam locomotive on the narrow gauge Ravenglass and Eskdale railway named after them and in 1927 there was a swish saloon known as the Brocklebank.

The present Sir Aubrey  even graces the picture collection held by the National Portrait Gallery – with portraits of him and his first wife, Dr  Anna-Marie Dunnet, purchased by the gallery in 2004. He was also like the all the family, educated at Eton but too old at 60, to be a contemporary of London mayor Boris Johnson.

But a closer investigation reveals that  Sir Aubrey is not all he seems. Gone it appears are the two stately homes – both are now hotels. And Sir Aubrey  now remarried  with wife, Lady Hazel, is actually on the electoral register at a£162,500  three bedroomed semi in Stanwick, Wellingborough in Northants – in the constituency of Tory Mp, Peter Bone.

He doesn’t even own his house outright – he has a mortgage with the very democratic Nationwide building society.

It is at this address in July  that he set up a small private company A & AB Investments Ltd, which paid the princely sum of £2 for London’s fire engines. It is this company that is now the ultimate owner of London’s fire services. He has since set up another company Premier Fireserve, based at  the leased maintenance plant owned by the fire brigade.

Nor does he have any of the illustrious careers of his ancestors. Instead he is non executive chair of a series of venture capitalist funds, under the name Puma – who simply offer very good tax avoidance schemes – by investing in anything from hotels, property, antiquarian books – and then liquidating their investments after five years to secure maximum tax relief and returns for their investors. Hardly reassuring for such a permanent feature as providing a fire service which cannot be traded for tax  avoidance.

His only other passion is racing 2cv cars – with a  team known as Twin Snails. Indeed the elderly boy racer competed at Snetterton in Norfolk over the August bank holiday weekend in the British championships. His team have had mixed fortunes -doing better at Snetterton but coming a cropper at Brands Hatch -see http://www.flickr.com/photos/maisiehexagon/492921242/

Now you may think I am making  all this up. I tried to contact Sir Aubrey five times  to find out his side of the story. But he is shy and reclusive when it comes to the press – and he never returned my calls. I wonder why as I never bite.

But I think any reasonable person would think he is not the  first person you would want to run a public service and he hardly even has a particularly good business record. It is time he is held to account and I have great hopes that  Ex MP Andrew Dismore, the Labour assembly member for Camden and Barnet, will pursue him on our behalf by every means possible to find out the truth behind this, on the surface, very dodgy development.

How Jeremy Hunt plans to implement Lansley’s sick funding scheme for NHS

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new health secretary Jeremy Hunt: Supporter of switching NHS cash from poor to the rich elderly

Four months ago I wrote a blog (see http://wp.me/pHiYZ-xu)  revealing a dastardly plan to switch NHS funding away from the poorest parts of England to the wealthiest areas under the guise of helping the elderly.

The scheme which drew attacks from Labour effectively meant tearing up the funding formula adopted since Clement Atlee which saw that the poorest deprived areas got more cash than the wealthy. To implement it Lansley was planning to get a health quango to recommend the changes. Thankfully since then nothing has happened..until today.

Jeremy Hunt, the newly appointed health secretary, it turns out is a passionate believer in such a scheme – as it would give loadsa state money to his own constituents in Surrey at the expense of Labour voting people in places like Newcastle upon Tyne and Sunderland.

I am indebted to a contact for alerting me to this information on Jeremy Hunt’ s own blog.

In his own words he says:

the real problem lies with the inherent  bias in the Government’s NHS funding formula of areas like Surrey. Guildford and Waverley’s population is weighted 9.1% upwards for market forces and 2.0% upwards for age structure but is weighted 25.3% downwards for additional need. The result of this is that the former Guildford & Waverley PCT’s target allocation per un-weighted head of population was £1,176, 15.3% less than the England average of £1,388. This means that even in an area with a large population of older people, the Royal Surrey is losing out”. Jeremy Hunt website (24 July, 2007, http://www.jeremyhunt.org/campaignshow.aspx?id=112&ref=50)
The extend of what this means is brilliantly explained in a user-friendly map by Dr Eoin Clarke – see http://eoin-clarke.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/camerons-new-man-in-charge-of-nhs.html.
So this reshuffle may mean an even worse future for the NHS from the man who befriends Rupert Murdoch. It will great news for  the Tory voting upper middle classes  from Esher to Guildford, but every, very bad news for deprived areas where Labour has a huge majority. It will allow Tory voters to live longer in safe seats and contribute to Labour voters dying  before their they have another chance to vote.Clever man, Mr Hunt. You can quiz him, by e-mailing at huntj@parliament.uk

Compare the Meerkat: Whipsnade Zoo Experience

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Zoo Keeper Rosie instructs me on how to handle the meerkats

It is the silly season so now for some fun and frolics. I spent the pre Bank Holiday weekend being a Whipsnade zoo keeper for a day! My wife Margaret brought it for my birthday and I must say Whipsnade deserve a big accolade for organising the whole experience. I would recommend it to anyone who likes animals.

compare the meerkats

We were given a perpetually cheerful keeper, Rosie, to take us around and make sure we didn’t get into any danger when we were less than a metre away from tigers, chimps and rhinos.

A wolverine – not cuddly – it can kill a moose with no trouble

As you can see we got really close to some animals – including feeding the meerkats – diet live crickets- and letting elephants take apples from our hands. I am now an expert on rhino poo having shovelled a few kilos of it and know how to hide elephants and chimps food  in trees, tyres and on ledges.

my prehistoric Tory friend at close quarters

I have hand fed rhinos, giraffes and penguins and thrown dead chicks to wolverines.  I have watched at close  quarter a tiger devour a meat joint in just 15 minutes.They are all very demanding, pretty publicity conscious, and  they love playing to the gallery, just like MPs really!

So  to take your mind off the grim world of politics, government spending cuts, Brian Coleman and  Andrew Lansleyfor one moment, here are the equivalent animals. I let you guess who should be who. No prizes offered.

elephant feeding time with keeper and fellow day tripper

An Alpha Male with the strength of eight humans. Ed Balls? Not Nick Clegg

How Michael Gove plays fast and loose with taxpayers money on school redundos

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 ImageOne would expect a right-wing Tory like education secretary  Michael Gove to be pretty diligent on how he spends taxpayers cash. You wouldn’t expect him to spray public money around without Treasury approval and then tell auditors  to get lost if they pick him up on it.

This is exactly what he has done  by handing out extra cash to his beloved school academies so they can  buy staff  redundos with extra payments without bothering to get it cleared by the Treasury.

And when this was rightly picked up by the National Audit Office – the independent Whitehall body that scrutinises taxpayers’ cash –  he has had the cheek to demand that the NAO and the Treasury go away and forget it.

The row is revealed by me in a piece for Exaro News (http://www.exaronews.com ) this month after the NAO took the decision to qualify the £6.1 billion accounts of the quango that funds academy schools ( now merged into a wider body ) after it found  14 cases of excess severance payments, totalling just under £230,000 at nine academies.

This may not sound much but it only found out about them after checking accounts of 135 academics – just eight percent of them. The other 92 per cent of academy accounts were never scrutinised by the quango. If this figure were applied pro rata the number of excessive unapproved redundo cash would top nearly £3m.

Now this may be good news for the people involved but it seems to me like a repeat performance of what happened in the Thatcher era where millions of pounds of taxpayers money were paid out in early retirements just when cash was short. The result was worse as many of these people are probably still claiming pensions now.

Don’t get me wrong I am not against people getting a good redundo deal ( I got one myself in the private sector) but I do think that where public money is concerned the deal should be scrutinised by the Treasury first. Otherwise every pound paid out on top of normal redundo is being taken out of paying for kids education.

Amyas Morse, the head of the NAO, writes in the report: “YPLA ( the now defunct quango) has not required academies to notify them of severance cases or any other payments that require Treasury approval, and so I have concluded that the assurance framework that YPLA had in place for the financial year was not capable of identifying and managing all cases.”

“I have been unable to confirm that, in all material respects, grants to academies conform with the authorities that govern them, and have been applied for the purposes intended by Parliament.”

Michael Gove’s response was: “We do not believe that we need approval for these payments because maintained schools are not required to submit them. We are working with the NAO and HM Treasury on this.”

This conveniently leaves out the fact that these schools are responsible to the  directly elected local authorities, academy schools are responsible to unelected civil servants.

My solution is simple. If Michael Gove wants to spray  taxpayers’ money around in this way, he should pay for it himself. After all the  excellent new search the money website (http://SearchTheMoney.com/) reveals he has received £462,000 in donations, £304,000 from one private equity firm). So he could raise the money for this excessive payments and leave the taxpayer to fund what it should do-public education.

Something rotten in Ruritannia

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Fillingham,Lincolnshire – the most unaccountable parish in England


Picture Credit: Ian Sykes
By David Hencke and Anne Hassan ( my daughter who has been training to be a journalist)

Updated: Since this blog appeared BBC Radio Lincolnshire have followed up the situation in Lincolnshire where some of the councils – who spend up to £140,000 a year – have said that they have prepared accounts but not submitted them to the Audit Commission. The effect of the local broadcast has been to highlight the councils’ behaviour in the county which had until then gone completely unnoticed.

Would you ever pay a bill without the slightest idea of where the money has gone? If you happen to live in 14 parishes across England you would have been doing this for up to the last ten years.

This extraordinary fact is buried in a  report by the Audit Commission on parish council spending (see http://bit.ly/yLaEhD ). It reveals that these parishes have levied a tax on all the householders in their area but have never produced any accounts of how they spent it for the last three years.

The worst place in England is the tiny parish meeting of Fillingham, near Gainsborough, where people have paid taxes- a precept with their council tax- for the last TEN  years and the meeting hasn’t bothered to produce an audited account of how they spent it since 2001.

Despite repeated warnings and rude letters from auditors the councillors there have obdurately refused to publish anything. They are not alone.

In Lincolnshire  there are five other parishes which have not produced accounts for between six and three years running. They are Wycliffe cum Hungarton Parish Meeting (six years);Little Ponton and Stroxton Parish Council (four years) and Fenton, Greatford, and Saxilby with Ingeby parish councils ( all three years).

Outside Lincolnshire there are eight parishes which have not produced accounts for three years or more, two in Leicestershire (Barleythorpe and  Burton Overy), and one each in Shropshire (Bromfield), Dorset (Church Knowle), Lancashire(Carrington), Suffolk (Ilketshall St Laurence),Warwickshire (Luddington)  and Cumbria (Newbiggin).

In addition 133 parish councils  which had submitted accounts have had them qualified for three years running and 567 have received qualifications this last year. This means their basic accounts are at best incorrect, at worst, a work of fiction.

Why should we care? The general opinion that these councils are so miniscule  that  the unreported cash is meaningless (Private Eye does  not even consider them for Rotten Boroughs).

Not so, these bodies – there are 9600 in England – raised a staggering £500m from householders last year.

As the Audit Commission says in its report: “Local electors are entitled to see how their parish council has spent taxpayers’ money. Those parish councils that fail to publish an audited annual return are not providing this most basic level of accountability.”

And it adds: “It is unacceptable that parish councils should fail persistently to produce an annual return, yet still be able to raise a precept.”

My daughter tried to contact three of the parish councils without  any success. Fillingham Parish Meeting’s chairman Mr Andrew Carter at Lake Farm was never available for comment. Mrs Mel Brown, the clerk at Wyeville cum Hungerton slammed the phone down with shock when asked why they had hot submitted accounts for six years . Ms Natalie Bowes, clerk of Little Ponton and Stroxton parish council numbers were unobtainable, despite being on a public website.

I began to  have sympathy with the Audit Commission in trying to chase up our money and whether it had been spent wisely. This is not a good advertisement for localism.

Leveson Inquiry: Do you want to comment on Newspics, Mr Embley ?

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Yet another development today in the fast moving Leveson inquiry into press standards. Lord Leveson – following the two blogs by Roy Greenslade in The Guardian and my exposure of Newspics website at http://www.exaronews.com – has invited the former editor of The People, Lloyd Embley, now editor in chief of  the Daily and Sunday Mirror, to comment on Matt Sprake’s evidence.

In a statement to the inquiry he said:” The Inquiry only learnt of the existence of Matthew Sprake very recently, but I am conscious that his evidence last week concerned, in large part, the work which he had been employed to carry out for The People.  Further, it raised issues relating to the responsibilities for the ethical decisions in connection with its commissioning.

Although I recognise that it is now too late to serve a notice under Section 21 of the Act on the editor, Mr Lloyd Embley (who gave evidence during the course of Module 1), should he wish to provide his account of that relationship, dealing with what Mr Sprake has said, I will, of course, consider it..”

It came on the same day the inquiry was told separately by the Scotland Yard chief, Sue Akers, that her bribery investigations were now covering allegations involving the Trinity Mirror group, owner of The People, over payments to prison officers involving Trinity Mirror as well as News International.There is no suggestion whatsoever that Matt Sprake is involved in this investigation.

Trinity Mirror were given the opportunity to comment on the Exaro News revelations about the inducements offered to public officials on Matt Sprake’s Newspics website but declined to take it up. Perhaps they will take more kindly to Lord Leveson’s request.

Full link to Leveson is :http://www.levesoninquiry.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/Transcript-of-Morning-Hearing-23-July-20121.txt

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Great Rail Journeys has ignored complaints over a Swiss hotel (not just from me) they used last Christmas. The British company is not all it seems either – it is really based in tax havens.

davidhencke's avatarWestminster Confidential

Since this blog was written Great Rail Journeys have not used the Ambassador Hotel in Brig. The Swiss private equity company ‘s new brochure shows they plan to use it again for Christmas. I would not recommend staying there -particularly over Xmas to avoid disappointment.

I am also reblogging this following revelations that up to £13 trillion is diverted by wealthy individuals to tax havens. The ultimate owners of Great Rail Journeys are in the Jersey tax haven and are directly connected to a Swiss Luxembourg bank which has links to taxhavens across the world from the Caymans to the Ukraine.

I can’t quite resist  going off piste and writing an evaluation of taking a break this Christmas – going with my wife Margaret on an organised rail trip to Switzerland in search of snow. Run by Great Railway Journeys (more later), a well-known up market travel company, parts of the trip equalled expectations…

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